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Jonathan Baker, the author of this post, is director of NOM’s Corporate Fairness Project.

With all the other problems corporations face, a sluggish economy, uncertain tax structure and a shifting regulatory environment, add a new problem: new challenges to the ideal of corporate fairness.

Item: Tom Emmer, who gained 44 percent of the votes in Minnesota for governor last election, says an offered position teaching a class in business law at Hamline University was abruptly withdrawn once faculty members objected to his support for Minnesota’s marriage amendment.

Hamline Prof. Jim Bonilla told the Pioneer Press that having a faculty member who opposed gay rights would violate the school’s nondiscrimination policy and be bad for business. (He cited the Human Rights Campaign’s boycott on Target for donating to a business PAC that support Emmer on economic and regulatory issues-a boycott that Emmer points out abjectly failed to influence consumers). Refusing to hire Emmer because of his view on gay marriage was “congruent with our values and a sound business system.”

Item: Nike, CBS and several other major corporations sign onto an amicus brief asking the First Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn DOMA, a law passed by bipartisan majorities and supported by millions of their customers and employees.

Item: The Human Rights Campaign threatened a major law firm, King and Spalding, with economic repercussions, unless the law firm dropped the House of Representatives as a client defending DOMA.

Item: Bank of America and Cisco announced they would not discriminate against vendors or employees for their views expressed outside the workplace, after Frank Turek’s contract was terminated when an employee within each company discovered he had written a book opposing gay marriage. These corporations eventually did the right thing, reinstating Turek as an eligible vendor and upholding a neutral corporate fairness viewpoint. But a major North Carolina-based gay rights group Faith in America, (whose stated mission is ending “religion based bigotry” against gay people), has now called on the corporations to fire Frank Turek and others with his views.

Clearly gay rights groups are moving from an ethic of fairness to diverse employees to an ethic of “diversity” that implies people with diverse views on gay marriage are unwelcome in corporate America.

Oddly enough it was Frank Turek who expressed the real ideal of corporate fairness in an interview he gave for NOM’s Marriage Anti-Defamation Alliance:

I am open to working with people of all sexual orientations or political views. In fact, that is what inclusion and diversity should be about. That, despite the fact that you inevitably might disagree with people over certain political, moral, or social issues, you will work together with them in a very cordial and professional manner. That’s what inclusion and diversity should be. It’s not that way anymore. You know what it is now? ‘If you do not agree with my narrow political view that same sex marriage must be put into law you are a bigot, you’re a homophobe, and you need to be fired.’ That’s where we are right now.

He’s right. The left routinely denounces corporations and capitalism, but corporations are underrated sources for progressive social values like fairness. Businesses strive to create a climate where people work together across dividing lines of race, creed, color and moral views, because corporations thrive when all their employees feel valued and free to contribute. They do not merely preach tolerance, they practice it and encourage it when they create policies that make people with diverse views, and not just diverse skin colors or orientations, welcome.

We are entering a new era, when some gay rights groups are now seeking to get corporations to discriminate against people who do not support gay marriage, and even threatening to punish corporations if they refuse.